Word: wiesner
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From the CIS the demonstrators will march back to the administration building and occupy selected offices there until 4 p.m., closing time. The offices of president Howard W. Johnson and provost Jerome Wiesner will be among those occupied. The same policy on evictions will be employed in the administration offices...
Concern about the future of the space program could well provoke a useful debate over the nation's priorities. The severest critics of space tend to cast the issue in terms of a hard choice between space and social tasks. Jerome Wiesner, John Kennedy's scientific adviser, says typically that "it would be a mistake to commit $100 billion to a manned Mars landing when we have problems getting from Boston to New York City...
Laird's opponents are not convinced. Among the most outspoken is an M.I.T. triumvirate-Jerome Wiesner, who was scientific adviser to President Kennedy; George Rathjens, recently of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; and Steven Weinberg, a physicist. In a critique released last week, the trio argued "In order to launch a first strike of the sort envisioned by Secretary Laird, the Soviets would need SS-9s with extraordinary accuracy and high reliability; they would need to solve the problem of coordinating an attack on our bombers and Minutemen; they would need to deal with our nuclear-armed...
Another point is that the system requires the most complicated assemblage of sophisticated computers and other electronic gear ever put together, which raises doubts about its reliability-especially since by its nature it can never be tested under conditions accurately simulating a nuclear attack. Wiesner also contends that any ABM is limited by the defender's guessing about the technology of the weapons it is designed to intercept. The attacker can add chaff and decoys as "penetration aids" to confuse the defender's radar and exhaust the supply of ABMs. Says Wiesner: "I do not think the defender...
...could be shelved by substantially hardening ICBM sites at a smaller cost ($6 billion to $7 billion). The Pentagon wants to do that in addition to Safeguard; the Air Force is already seeking out "hard rock" silo locations that would make ICBMs more resistant even to multimegaton near misses. Wiesner, Rathjens and Weinberg suggest that the number of ICBMs could be doubled for the price of Safeguard, which would mean that more than 1,000 missiles would survive an attack by the 420 SS-9s that the Pentagon's Foster hypothesized. Wohlstetter answers: "There are safer and cheaper ways...